A monster most every weekday. Three adventure seeds a post.
Because Pathfinder and 3.5 are more fun than work.
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Friday, March 6, 2015

Huldra

When that nice young shepherdess you meet accidentally
reveals that it’s not her dress that’s backless, it’s her back…then you know you’re dealing with a huldra.Oh, and her tail can literally slap you
ugly.Good times!

There should be an
easy thematic link to make about a huldra’s emptiness and the
fleetingness/hollowness of chasing beauty and sexual gratification.And many of the stories about huldras do
run that way—fairy tale morality doe not tend toward subtlety.But there are also plenty of stories of
huldras who are truly loving and who reward strangers for politeness and kind
acts—there’s one such huldra in the Reign of Winter Adventure Path, in fact—so
they can’t all be stereotyped so easily.In other words, as with most fey, approach with caution but do not dare
to presume too much.

Here’s another neat thing: Huldras seem to hold charcoal burners in special regard.Why?In our world, who knows?But in Pathfinder it makes perfect sense, because charcoal is so
useful for making sure practically everyone can stoke a fire to drive off
trolls!Isn’t it nice when
real-life fluff and in-game fluff come together?

One of the charcoal
burners stole a substantial amount of money from a traveler.The collier hid the stolen coins in a
clay jug and buried it in one of his charcoal pits, intending to retrieve it
later.When adventurers come to
question the man about the theft, his huldra lover attempts to seduce or charm them away.Meanwhile, an azer slave has discovered
the jug in the ashes and seeks to use the money to buy his freedom.

A woman comes into
the tavern on a winter night and begins to eat.And eat.And
eat.At first she is charming and
the men (and women) are happy to share from their plates.But soon she is demanding more and
more. People begin to watch in disgust—it is winter and stores are meant to be
parceled out judiciously—and then in horror as the half-chewed meals begin to
fall out of the woman’s back.She
is a huldra with an obscene appetite for food rather than sex.When the bartender tries to cut her
off, she lashes him into ugliness with her tail and then begins to devour him
in front of her shocked audience.And then she turns to the rest of the room, licking her lips…

Lady Huriko wears not
just one disguise, but two.To
the outside world, she is a respected geisha, the young consort of an elderly
daimyo.To her future husband (and a few
eavesdropping servants), she is a kitsune sent by the Forest Spirit as a reward
for his wise rule.In truth, she
is a fox-tailed huldra who has successfully hidden her true nature from
all.She plans to murder the
daimyo and rule in his place just as soon as they are married.Her impatience is beginning to show,
however, which may tip off observant adventurers.

—Lands of the Linnorm
Kings 59 & Pathfinder Bestiary 4
151

By the way, personally I like my huldra with a cow’s tail,
not a fox’s, for the simple reason that we already have plenty of fox-tailed
monsters out there, the kitsune being foremost among them.Fox-tailed huldras aren’t
incorrect—it’s a totally acceptable variant—but I still
think it smacks of Harpy Syndrome.

(Are any of you TV Tropes editors?I want to know if there’s another name for Harpy Syndrome…and if not, I want to add it to the list.#immortality)

Charcoal burning is one of those weird old-timey professions
I think we forget existed—I know I’d never heard of them until recently.I think most of us by now have run into
our share of fletchers and coopers—both in-game and at places like Colonial Williamsburg
and Renaissance festivals—but it’s the lamplighters, charcoal burners,
catchpoles, broom-dashers, grinders, and pissprophets that grab my
interest.(I also spent a lot of
time in college thinking about Aghori and Kāpālikas as liminal figures
straddling the sacred and profane realms, so anyone who spends a lot of time
around smoldering embers and ash has my attention…)

By the way, please forgive the occasional typos. I am aware of them, but disagreements between MS Word and the Blogger template make my entries nearly impossible to edit once posted. I blame gremlins. You can find a more polished version of this blog over on Tumblr.